THE BREAKFAST BRIEFING

Little has gotten in the way of the market’s record-setting run this year. Few obstacles lie on the horizon, either.

With the Fed’s easy-money policies in place, neither a tepid earnings season nor mixed economic data have dissuaded investors from pushing stock prices higher. Aside from some exogenous event, there doesn’t appear to be much that could spook investors right now.Stock valuations are far from stretched, Europe’s debt crisis has moved to the back burner and worries in Washington have waned.

The latter point is key, especially since the fiscal-cliff and debt-ceiling brouhaha late last year proved to be the last catalyst that triggered a pullback in the stock market.

The development gives Congress and the White House additional time to conduct the next round of budget talks. It also removes one of the market’s few overhangs, creating a scenario that appears ripe for the rally to keep rolling along.

Friday’s triple-digit-point gain propelled the Dow to its fourth straight week of gains. The blue-chip average has surged 17% this year. It sits well above 15000 and is showing few signs of losing the momentum that has allowed it to set 21 record highs this year.

“It’s been the same bottom line here for most of the past couple of months, and Friday’s activity did absolutely nothing to change it,” Jason Goepfert of Sundial Capital Research wrote in an email Friday evening. “Based solely on the types of patterns and indicators we follow, the risk level won’t rise until the market environment changes and/or we see a spike in short-term sentiment.

“Neither is evident at the moment.”

Morning MoneyBeat Daily Factoid: On this day in 1971, Marvin Gaye released the album “What’s Going On.”

-Steven Russolillo

STOCKS TO WATCH

Expectations are running high for Campbell Soup going into the food company’s earnings report Monday. With a 37% gain so far this year, its shares are a star performer among big U.S. packaged food companies. For the company’s fiscal third quarter, analysts estimate Campbell will earn 56 cents a share, flat from the same period in 2012. Sales are forecast to increase 12% to $2 billion, FactSet data show.

Watch out forAcquity Group when regular trading begins Monday. Late Friday Accenture said it was buying Acquity for $13 a share, sending shares of the digital marketing company up 111% to $12.59 in after-hours action. Elsewhere on Monday’s earnings deck isQihoo 360 Technology, a China-based provider of Internet security software.

Pyongyang Fires Another Rocket: “North Korea fired another short-range missile into the sea off its eastern coast on Monday, extending its series of launches to five missiles over the last three days, South Korea’s defense ministry said.”

Dollar Falls Against Yen: “The dollar lost ground against the yen Monday, while European stocks pared earlier gains to trade largely flat as falling metals prices weighed on the basic resources sector.”

Gold Slump Hits Silver: ”Gold’s longest slump since the financial crisis extended for an eighth day, with the tumble spilling over into silver, which fell to its lowest level since 2010.”

MoneyBeat: Broadband Torrent Washes Pirates Away: “The pirates are still out there, but they seem to be at bay. BitTorrent is a popular file-sharing site that has often played host to media companies’ unauthorized copyrighted material. In the past six months, it accounted for 9.2% of peak-period traffic on North American fixed-access broadband networks, according to a recent report by networking-equipment company Sandvine. That is down from 11.3% the previous year and 17.2% in 2011.”

Yahoo Deal Shows Power Shift: “Yahoo Inc. has agreed to pay $1.1 billion for Tumblr, a six-year-old company with more than 100 million users but very little revenue, a deal that highlights the shifting balance of power in the technology business.”

Heard on the Street: Yahoo Drinks Tumblr of Opportunity: “Yahoo plans to buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion. The price seems high, based on conventional metrics, but the money will be well spent if Yahoo gets its cool back with the kids.”

Senate Launches Pension-Sale Probe: “A Senate committee launched an investigation of a controversial business in which retirees sell pieces of their future pension income to investors for a lump-sum cash payment.”